ABCDE OUTLOOK sunday, august 22, 2010 INSIDE
Obama’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week Chris Cillizza explains. B2
BOOK WORLD, B6-8 Faith’s fault line Poet and journalist Eliza Griswold travels to the intersection of Islam and Christianity. B7
An ode to adoption Scott Simon’s tale of finding daughters in China — and bringing them home. B6 From Don Quixote to whodunits The history of the novel, one classic at a time. B6
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SHOW THEM THE
by Donald H. Yee MONEY
College football is big business, so why not pay the players? A pro agent makes the case.
The Church of College Football is about to open for services. It is per- haps the most passionate religion we have in this country, a seductive blend of our most popular sport and the romantic notion that the young athletes are playing for their schools, not for money. Two championship coaches recently launched attacks on sports agents for allegedly defiling this house of worship by giving college players what the National Collegiate Athletic Association calls “impermissible ben- efits” — benefits that make those players pros and not amateurs. “The agents that do this, and I hate to say this, but how are they any better than a pimp?” Alabama’s Nick Saban so memorably put it last month. “I have no respect for people who do that to young people. None.” And Florida’s Urban Meyer said that the problem is “epidemic right now” and that agents and their associates need to be “severely punished.” Yet, I suspect that virtually everyone in our industry — players, coach- es, administrators, boosters, agents and fans — shed our naivete a long time ago. We know that the sole focus for many star college players is get- ting ready for pro ball, that coaches are looking for financial security on the backs of teenagers and that boosters enjoy the ego stroke that comes with virtually owning a piece of a team. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with these goals, but there isn’t anything “amateur” about the process, either.
football continued on B4
Donald H. Yee is a lawyer and partner with Yee & Dubin Sports, a Los Angeles sports-management firm that represents professional athletes and coaches, including New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton.
sense and uncommon courtesy some- times required to come together as Americans. In our society, we are free to do many things that we nonetheless choose not to. During my lifetime, a number of racial and ethnic slurs have been effectively banned from our na- tional vocabulary — not because our free speech has been limited, but be- cause we recognize that these words are deeply offensive to our fellow citizens and we decide to avoid them. The proposed site of Park51, an Islam-
T
ic cultural center that will include a mosque, is especially contentious be- cause it goes to the heart of who is to blame for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. I stood in the Oval Office just two days af- ter those horrific attacks as President George W. Bush spoke by telephone with New York Gov. George Pataki and New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. He highlighted the importance of distin- guishing between those who committed the acts of terror and the broader Mus- lim community. “Our nation must be mindful that there are thousands of Arab Americans who live in New York City, who love their flag just as much as the three of us do, and we must be mindful that as we seek to win the war that we treat Arab Americans and Mus- lims with the respect they deserve,” the president said. Days later, I recommended to Presi- dent Bush that he visit a mosque to set an example of respect for our fellow Americans who are Muslim. With anger still high and emotions raw, some ar- gued against the visit to the Islamic Center of Washington, but the president felt it sent an important signal. “Amer- ica counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an in- credibly valuable contribution to our
mosque continued on B2
Karen Hughes, a global vice chair at Burson-Marsteller, served as counselor to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002 and as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs from 2005 to 2007.
Alberto Gonzales weighs in on “anchor babies.” B2
BOOK REVIEW The unmaking of the atomic bomb by George Perkovich
political history of nuclear weapons is repeating itself: One country gets the ultimate weapon of mass destruction, feels smug and secure for a while, then tries desperately to keep its adversaries from joining the club. That scenario predominated through the end of the 20th century. Israel bombed Iraq’s Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981. The United States secretly consid- ered attacking the Soviet Union and China before those nations could deploy the bomb. Indian leaders contemplated bombing Pakistan’s nuclear facilities when Pakistan was about at the stage Iran has reached now. But bombing pro- vides no lasting solution.
O
nce again, foreign policy cir- cles are speculating that Is- rael will bomb Iran to stop, or at least slow, its march toward nuclear weapons. The
THE TWILIGHT OF THE BOMBS Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World Without Nuclear Weapons By Richard Rhodes Knopf. 366 pp. $27.95
As the nuclear threat shifts to terror- ists and deranged dictatorships, a new phase in nuclear history may be emerg- ing: a recognition by some leaders in nuclear-armed states that the world would be more secure if these weapons were eliminated. To Richard Rhodes, the most accomplished narrator of America’s efforts to create and control atomic weapons, complete nuclear dis- armament is a laudable ambition, and it
forms the underpinning of his latest work, “The Twilight of the Bombs.” No one writes better about nuclear
history than Rhodes does, ably combin- ing a scholar’s attention to detail with a novelist’s devotion to character and pacing. He began his exploration in 1987 with “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” which won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. He also earned praise for “Dark Sun,” the story of the hydrogen bomb’s creation. “Ar- senals of Folly” tackled the beginning of U.S. and Soviet cooperation to end the arms race. In “The Twilight of the Bombs,” Rhodes documents events from the end of the Cold War to 2003 that, he be- lieves, point toward the feasibility of eradicating nuclear weapons. He chronicles the underpublicized drama of the era: the efforts to contain the spread of nuclear weapons after the So-
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George Perkovich is the director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a co-editor of “Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.”
A
The vultures swept in. New Orleans fought back.
by Dan Baum
month after the levees broke, when New Orleans was still a dark, damp ghost town, I ran into the saxophone player Joe Braun as he loped gloomily
through the deserted French Quarter in his trademark newsboy cap. I was in a funk about the latest bad news — the floodwaters after Hurricane Katrina had swallowed all of the city’s real es- tate records — and I mournfully con- veyed it, half-expecting Braun to burst into tears. Instead, his face brightened. “Thank God!” he said, and hurried off as if to spread the word, the staccato of his footsteps echoing off shuttered storefronts. It took me awhile to understand.
Dan Baum is the author of “Nine Lives: Mystery, Magic, Death and Life in New Orleans.” new orleans continued on B5
Braun wasn’t concerned about real es- tate, and neither were most New Orlea- nians, who had always regarded their houses as homes, not piggy banks. Al-
though they correctly guessed that ad- equate help would never arrive, they were confident that they would physi- cally rebuild, house by ruined house. What worried them was not the loss of deeds or titles, but the prospect of los- ing their culture, and with it, the city’s soul. I first got to know New Orleans when it was submerged, as I covered the af- termath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 for the New Yorker. I spent most of the following year there, then moved to the Bywater neighborhood for half of 2007 while I researched a book about the city. Even at its low point, I could tell New Orleans was a profoundly weird place. The longer I spent there, the clearer it became that what makes New Orlea- nians so different from other Amer- icans is that they are experts at the lost art of living in the moment. They’re less deadline-driven and less money-ob-
B DC MD VA B
myths about departing Iraq. B3
I hope they choose to move the mosque
by Karen Hughes
he national debate about building a mosque near Ground Zero in New York is less about our freedom of reli- gion than about the common
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